Doing race and ethnicity: exploring the lived experience of whiteness at a Danish Public School
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
This article addresses race and ethnicity as social practices among young students at a Danish public sports school and explores how these practices engage with emotional well-being in the institutional context. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two school classes in 2012–2013 using multiple qualitative methods. Taking a phenomenological practice approach, the article addresses how racial (and ethnic) practices affect everyday school life. The analysis shows how a common-sense, habitual background of whiteness positions non-white bodies as different and ‘non-belonging’, thus shaping experiences of being ‘out of place’. These experiences are stressful to students in the study and foster a self-awareness that restrains the body from engaging habitually in the world and that obstructs emotional well-being. The article argues that a reluctance to acknowledge social practices as racial enables everyday racism while blocking the positions available to speak out against ethnic and racial discriminatory experiences.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Whiteness and Education |
Volume | 1 |
Issue number | 2 |
Pages (from-to) | 137-149 |
Number of pages | 13 |
ISSN | 2379-3406 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2 Jul 2016 |
ID: 174899395